Bookable
An Apollonaut travel guide
Steel among the trees.
An introduction to the forests, lookouts and waterfalls around Knights Hill, where the Illawarra Fly stands on the escarpment.
On this page
Read the landscape
From Knights Hill the escarpment falls away towards the coast. Nearby, Budderoo National Park holds Minnamurra Rainforest and its falls, heathland and eucalypt woodland.
A guide can give context without turning a landscape into a backdrop. Notice how the rainforest gives way to drier forest, where the creeks cut into the sandstone, and how the view opens towards the sea.
A walkway on a fire trail
The Treetop Walk follows an existing fire trail, so its builders did not need to clear the forest. The walk weighs over 160 tonnes.
Begin with a detail and ask how it was built and kept safe. A photograph alone cannot tell you how a walkway was raised into the canopy.
An Illawarra Fly chapter
The Illawarra Fly shows one side of the escarpment today: a way to see the rainforest from above rather than from the forest floor.
Look at the meeting of the two: slender steel and the tall trees around it.
Make room for context
Pair this reading with the walk’s history and the Journal. This is an introduction for visitors, not a claim that our team manages these places or represents the people who run them.
Read at the source
Sources & further reading
Links lead to the original publishers.
